1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to fire-arm ammunition, specifically the means for identifying the sellers and buyers or, more generally, the providers and recipients of ammunition whose formed components are found at a crime scene or the site of military or law-enforcement action.
2. Description of the Related Art
Political conversations and news reports imply that forensic ballistics practice is still inefficient and uncertain. Associating a projectile or shell casing with a possible user requires recovery of a spent ammunition component with interpretable markings from the fire arm which discharged the ammunition, and it requires recovery of the fire arm. The latter may be associated with the owner or recent handler based on registration information or finger prints, respectively. This process would be much more efficient if the formed components of ammunition were code labeled and registered.
Roxby (U.S. Pat. No. 6,698,816) described a method for labeling ammunition projectiles wherein an identification member (IDM) in the form of a labeled disk is secured at the rear face of a bullet core by a cup-shaped copper jacket enclosing the rear part of the bullet core. Griffin (U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,483) described inclusion of an IDM in the form of a metal ring within the projectile. Collier (U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,789) described inclusion of an IDM within the projectile, the IDM being of any shape, any size and any material able to maintain its integrity in molten lead. Collier also suggested an identifiable chemical mixture incorporated into the lead. Hammond (U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,624) described a method wherein an IDM in the form of a rod or wafer is embedded within the projectile. The labeling methods involving formed IDMs should be effective, as the IDMs can bear codes with sufficient coding capacity, they are relatively tamper proof, and they should survive impact. Krystyniak (U.S. Pat. No. 4,222,330) described a method involving incorporation of magnetic particles of various Curie temperatures into the formed components of ammunition. It appears that this method and the chemical-mixture method of Collier would be difficult to implement and very limited in coding capacity compared with the other methods involving formed IDMs.
Disclosed herein are several methods for labeling formed components of ammunition with the two-dimensional binary array of Sant' Anselmo et al (U.S. Pat. No. 4,924,078), a coding symbol which would also be ideal for the IDMs of Roxby, Collier and Hammond.